Flashlights & Chainsaws

Nope, it's not the latest horror movie that's coming out, instead it's a summary of what happened to us last night. Up until about 6pm my day was right on track...groceries at Walmart in the morning, swim lessons for Will and then home for lunch and naps/rest. I had steak fajitas cooking in the crockpot and was aiming for dinner at 5:45pm and then planning to be out the door to a meeting by 6:40pm.

By about 5:30pm the rain started. This is nothing new since for the last two weeks it seems like it's rained for a little bit nearly every day. By about 5:45 the rain is really picking up and the wind is howling. By about 6pm I'm a little freaked out. I can't even see the neighbor's house for the rain. There's hail being fired at our windows and our trees (there are lots of them on our property) are REALLY swaying. Alex is screaming, covering his ears and trembling. Will's sticking to my side and getting scared too. Then the power goes out. We're piled on the couch in the playroom watching the rain pour off the roof and I notice a tree down in our yard. Then, in the next 5 minutes the rain and wind stop. Scott arrives home and we notice he can barely pull into the driveway because there's another tree down partially blocking the way.

Here's what the damage looked like:

We drove around the neighborhood today and besides leaves, pinestraw and twigs in the road we didn't see that many trees down. It seems like most of the main damage is in a 6 or 7 house radius around us. There's a huge, tall tree down at the house diagonally behind us and another one at the house directly behind us. How strange. I've never experienced a hurricane or tornado before, but that's what it felt like. My neighbor said it's what's called a "microburst". He's an aviation mechanic, so he knows about these things...especially since they have a history of bringing down planes. Here's what I learned about wet microbursts courtesy of Wikipedia:

-they're most likely to occur in the South East US (check!)

-they have moderate to severe precipitation (severe...check!)

-wind speeds are over 75 miles/hour (check!)

-they typically affect an area 2.5 miles in diameter or less (ours was very localized...check!)

So, as I headed off to my meeting last night (since everyone else besides our neighborhood had power), the boys played outside while Scott and the neighbor worked on the fallen trees. The boys enjoyed a candlelight dinner and stories by flashlight. Today, all I can hear is chainsaws going and I've seen a couple tree removal trucks on the next street over.

What a bizarre 24 hours it's been. Now I'm off to sweep up twigs, leaves and pinestraw.